Alan S. Chartock: State Senate Democrats earned their rep

Andrea Stewart-Cousins has been elected by her colleagues to be the new minority leader of the hopelessly fractured and dysfunctional New York State Senate Democrats.

To do that, the Democratic Conference had to oust Minority Leader John Sampson, who we are told, was reluctant to take the job in the first place. Also ousted was Deputy Minority Leader Neil Breslin, one of the most decent men in the Senate.

The Democratic minority leader's position has always been relatively unimportant. Sure, the minority leader gets extra salary, staff and perks but the Senate is run as a closed corporation with the Republican Senate majority having all the power. For years, the Majority Leader has been a Republican. It's almost constitutional. These Republicans decide what bills will be brought up and what bills will pass.

The majority leader is really a one man show. Along with the governor and the Assembly speaker, he is one of the infamous "three men in a room" who make all the decisions in state politics. So it has been for years. Years ago, I worked for the then Minority Leader Manfred Ohrenstein as a consultant and so observed the mighty struggle to do something meaningful and get some attention. It's really pathetic.

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By now, any observer of the Albany scene knows that the game is loaded, meaning that the Republican majority gets to draw their own districts. That makes the chances of anyone but them winning the game hopeless. Most observers believe that Gov. Andrew Cuomo would rather have the Republicans in power than the fractious circular firing squad known as the Democratic conference. I can't say that I blame him.

When Cuomo ran for governor, he promised to put a stop to that un-democratic process and veto any bill that allowed the gerrymander game to continue. He demanded an outside group to do fair redistricting. In the end, he broke his word but even their redistricting advantage didn't help the Republicans who had to contend with an Obama-led Democratic landslide. When a group of upstart Democrats led by Sen. Jeff Klein sold out to the Republicans, the Republicans were left in power even though technically, the Democrats won.

Naturally, this state of affairs did not sit well with some of the remaining Democrats who were now reduced to the political minority. These unhappy Democrats include one of the most vitriolic of all the State senators, Bill Perkins, who appealed to the governor to "... stand up for representative government and against the plantation politics of backroom deals putting us in the back of the bus." The "us," of course, is the group of the black minority members who control the leadership of the Democrats in the State Senate.

There are many observers of the political scene who understand that once the black members of the Senate captured the leadership, they were not about to let it go thereby putting the Caucasian members of the Senate in the back of the Senate bus to which Senator Perkins alluded.

So now Sen, Stewart-Cousins is the Minority Leader. There is some speculation that the Jeff Klein forces may like her more than the deposed Senator Sampson and come back, thereby putting the Democrats back in control of the Senate. I suspect that is not going to happen. The deal that has been cut makes Kline and Republican Dean Skelos co-leaders of the Senate, two weeks on, two weeks off. Obviously they will end up fighting and then maybe the Democrats will get back together. Right now, however, Stewart-Cousins will have to play a very second fiddle.

The Democrats have properly developed a reputation for infighting, not unlike the Hatfields and McCoys. Their conference has Senators who hate each other and who are practicing racial politics. I've been around Albany for a long time and nothing has changed when it comes to their behavior. In the Assembly, Speaker Shelly Silver has things well under control but these Senate Democrats surely have a tradition of ineptitude.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC. His column appears Saturday.